We’ll tackle housing crisis by turning empty shops into homes, vows Theresa
VACANT high street shops should be converted into homes to help confront the housing crisis, Theresa May said yesterday.
In a keynote speech, Mrs May said young people were ‘right to be angry’ about the difficulties of getting on the property ladder.
She argued that spiralling prices had created a ‘crisis of affordability’ and made the aspiration of buying a home a ‘distant dream’ for many, increasing rents and damaging social mobility.
Meanwhile, homeowners had received huge returns, allowing them to amass vast ‘unearned’ wealth.
The Prime Minister told the Royal Town Planning Institute conference in London that she wanted to revive the dream of each generation being better off than the last.
However, she also insisted Britain was not an ‘overcrowded’ island – and therefore solving the problem would not mean building on the green belt. Figures show only one in four middle-earners aged 25 to 34 owns a property, and since the mid-1990s house prices have grown seven times faster than incomes. Yesterday the Mail reported plans to allow two more storeys on top of existing buildings, crack down on developers who sit on land after they have been granted planning permission, and strip councils of their planning powers, if they fail to build.
Another solution could be turning vacant shops into houses, Mrs May said. Quoting former Tory prime minister Sir Anthony Eden, she stressed that owning property ‘is not a crime or a sin, but a reward, a right and a responsibility that must be shared as equitably as possible among all our citizens’.
She said that as the world of retail changes, with more customers buying more goods online, ‘one of the elements of the new planning rules we’re setting out is to make it easier for shops to be turned into housing if that’s appropriate – but also for development above retail units to take place’.
She continued: ‘Often there’s a very good argument for having homes in the centre of town, accessible to shops [and] transport infrastructure.’ She said that during last year’s election it was clear young people were angry that ‘regardless of how hard they work, they won’t be able to buy a place of their own’.
They were also angry that ‘no matter how many sacrifices they make to save for a deposit, they’ll never be able to compete with someone whose parents have released equity from their own home to help their children buy.’ Amid the housing crisis, profits at Britain’s biggest housing developers have doubled in little over a decade, even though they are building fewer homes.
The country’s seven leading housebuilders – Barratt Developments, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey, Bellway, Redrow, Berkeley and Bovis – made £4.4billion last year. That was double the £2.2billion of profit in 2006, yet the seven companies built just 70,890 new homes last year – 298 shy of the 71,188 constructed in 2006, before the credit crunch plunged the industry into crisis.
The figures, from stockbroker AJ Bell, mean the seven companies made about £62,000 from every home they built and sold last year.
Yesterday the Prime Minister said: ‘I expect developers to do their duty to Britain and build the homes our country needs.’
Mrs May denied being a ‘nimby’ in her own constituency of Maidenhead, where she has opposed several developments.
She said she had also supported proposals for green belt land which had already been built on.
The Prime Minister said her opposition had been ‘about building the right homes in the right places’, adding: ‘That’s what the planning process is actually about ... it ensures that developments [and] proposals for developments are looked at properly.’
Polly Neate, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, said: ‘Our current housebuilding system is clearly not fit for purpose.’ She called for more government support for local authorities and housing associations.
‘Shared among all our citizens’